Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools

Transcription

1 RESEARCH REPORT MAY 2014 Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools Relationships with Learning Outcomes and Reasons for Absences Stacy B. Ehrlich, Julia A. Gwynne, Amber Stitziel Pareja, and Elaine M. Allensworth with Paul Moore, Sanja Jagesic, and Elizabeth Sorice

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Executive Summary 5 Introduction Chapter 1 9 The Extent of Absenteeism in Preschool and the Early Grades Chapter 2 17 Preschool Attendance and Primary Grade Outcomes Chapter 3 25 Reasons for Preschool Absences Chapter 4 37 Interpretive Summary 41 References 43 Appendices 57 Endnotes ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to acknowledge the many people who contributed to this work through their partnership, support, encouragement, and feedback. This work is the result of a collaboration between the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) and the Office of Early Childhood Education at Chicago Public Schools (CPS), with funding from the McCormick Foundation. From CPS, Serah Fatani, Noriko Magari, and Sheila O Connell were critical partners throughout every stage of the project. They not only provided us with essential data for this research, but they also supported our efforts in data collection, gave feedback on research questions and findings, and collaborated on dissemination activities. Elizabeth Mascitti-Miller has already started to incorporate the implications of key findings from this study into preschool programs across the district. We also thank Barbara Bowman for having the foresight and conviction to learn more about how absenteeism affects preschool children in the district, which was the impetus for this research. Our collaboration with The McCormick Foundation was equally important. This project was generously funded by the McCormick Foundation, and Sara Slaughter, Lindsay Alvis Cochrane, and Erika Okezie-Phillips at the Foundation were important thought partners at every phase of this work. They provided critical feedback on research questions and findings, but most important, they pushed us to think carefully about how to make this work relevant and meaningful for schools, teachers, and preschool students and their families. The authors also benefited from the feedback and support from our colleagues at UChicago CCSR. We want to thank Stuart Luppescu for his work analyzing the Kindergarten Readiness Tool (KRT) data; Laney Shaler, Eric Brown, Michelle Huynh, and Josie Glore for assistance with data collection, transcription, and analysis; Lauren Sartain and Eliza Moeller for their detailed comments on draft versions of this work; and Jennifer Cowhy, Holly Hart, and Valerie Michelman for their careful technical read. Emily Krone provided countless hours of support and feedback, always finding ways to improve our writing and message. We are also grateful for the opportunity to connect this work with that of Hedy Chang of Attendance Works. Hedy works tirelessly to connect the research focusing on attendance and with practitioners in the field nationwide. As always, we are indebted to the members of our Steering Committee, who exhibited engagement and excitement over this work. A special thank you goes to Kim Zalent and Reyna Hernandez for their careful read of this document and their feedback. This report was produced by UChicago CCSR s publications and communications staff: Emily Krone, Director for Outreach and Communication; Bronwyn McDaniel, Communications and Research Manager; and Jessica Puller, Communications Specialist. Graphic Design: Jeff Hall Design Photography: Cynthia Howe Editing: Ann Lindner /pdf/jh.design@rcn.com

3 PRESCHOOL ATTENDANCE IN CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS Executive Summary Significant attention is currently focused on ensuring that children are enrolled in preschool. However, regular attendance is also critically important. Children with better preschool attendance have higher kindergarten readiness scores; this is especially true for students entering with low skills. Unfortunately, many preschool-aged children are chronically absent. They often miss preschool for health reasons, but many families also face a range of logistical obstacles in getting their children to preschool every day. Consistent school attendance is a foundation of student learning. While missing one or two days of school each year is not likely to have serious consequences, chronic absenteeism is related to significantly lower outcomes for students. Research shows that chronic absenteeism undermines the academic performance of adolescents. 1 And new research suggests that absenteeism is not only a problem among adolescents but also is a significant problem among very young students: 11 percent of kindergarteners across the nation are chronically absent. Kindergarten students who miss more school learn less during the school year. 2 While policymakers and others might be tempted to assume that attendance similarly affects students in kindergarten and preschool, there is very little research on attendance in the preschool years and whether it matters for learning outcomes. Given that many children start their formal schooling in preschool and because the promise of preschool is to prepare children for kindergarten, it is critical to know whether absenteeism undermines that promise. To address this gap in research, the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) partnered with the Office of Early Childhood Education at the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in 2011 to study absenteeism among CPS preschool students. This report outlines key findings from this study. It describes the extent of absenteeism among preschool students and compares it with absenteeism among students in kindergarten through third grade; examines the relationship between preschool absenteeism and learning outcomes, both during preschool and in second grade; and explores reasons why preschool students miss school. Summary of Key Findings Preschool students miss a lot of school. In , 45 percent of three-year-old preschool students and 36 percent of four-year-old preschool students were chronically absent meaning they missed at least 10 percent of their enrolled days, or a minimum of 15 days, over the course of a full school year. Regular attendance improves substantially between preschool and kindergarten. In , the percentage of kindergarten students who were chronically absent was 20 percent, half the rate of preschool students. This improvement continues into the early elementary grades. Some groups of students are much more likely to be chronically absent than others. Racial differences are particularly stark: African American students are almost twice as likely as white, Latino, and Asian students to be chronically absent. Chronic absenteeism is also higher among students who live in high-poverty neighborhoods than among students 1 Executive Summary

4 2 who live in moderate- or low-poverty neighborhoods. Even after taking into account neighborhood poverty, however, African American preschool students are still much more likely to be chronically absent than other students who live in neighborhoods with similar levels of poverty. Students who miss more preschool end the year with lower skills; this relationship is strongest for students with low incoming skills. The more days of preschool a student misses at age four, the lower s/he scores on the math, letter recognition, and social-emotional portions of CPS s Kindergarten Readiness Tool (KRT) at the end of the school year, controlling for entering skills upon entering preschool. Students who miss the most preschool are those with the lowest incoming skills. Controlling for skills upon entering preschool, good attendance is more strongly related to academic gains for students who enter preschool with lower incoming skills than for students who enter with higher incoming skills. Students who are chronically absent in preschool are five times more likely to be chronically absent in second grade. Students who are chronically absent for multiple years between preschool and second grade are in need of intervention to read at grade level by third grade, on average. Preschool attendance is related to chronic absenteeism in kindergarten, a detrimental pattern that often continues into elementary school. While just 7 percent of non-chronically absent four-year-old students go on to be chronically absent in kindergarten, roughly one-third of chronically absent fouryear-old preschoolers continue to be chronically absent kindergarteners. The relationship between preschool attendance and attendance in later years continues into the elementary grades: chronically absent preschool children are five times more likely to be chronically absent in second grade than their non-chronically absent preschool peers. Students who are chronically absent between preschool and second grade have significantly lower learning outcomes at the end of second grade than their counterparts who are not chronically absent in the early years. Each successive year of chronic absenteeism compounds the risk. In fact, second-graders who have been chronically absent every year since preschool are, on average, close to the threshold for needing intensive reading intervention in order to be reading at grade level by third grade. For all students, health is the most commonly reported reason children miss preschool; a variety of logistical obstacles are secondary. More than half of all the days missed in preschool were due to children being sick, according to attendance logs recorded over a nine-week period. Another 18 percent of days missed were due to a range of reported logistical obstacles for families, including difficulties getting children to and from school, child care issues, and multiple family-related matters. Many of these logistical obstacles arise because of difficulty with half-day preschool schedules, according to interviews with parents. Half-day programs require that parents find child care for the remainder of the day and arrange drop-off/pick-up in the middle of the day. African American and Latino students are sick more often than white students, and African American families report facing many more logistical obstacles. Nearly all preschool students were likely to be sick over the school year, but African American and Latino students missed almost twice as many days due to sickness than white students, according to attendance log data. African American students are also much more likely than white or Latino students to face a logistical obstacle in getting to school. Not only were there higher proportions of African American students missing school because of logistical challenges, but those who did encounter these struggles each missed more days of school than white or Latino students who encountered similar struggles. UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools

5 Particular family circumstances are related to higher absences for children. The gap in attendance across racial/ethnic groups is partially explained by differences in these family circumstances. Children who faced the following family circumstances had higher preschool absences: being in a single-parent family; having parents with poorer health; using the emergency room for primary medical care; and having a parent who is either unemployed or employed but without a college degree. As these circumstances pile up for families, attendance gets worse. Children in families without any of the aforementioned circumstances missed roughly 5.6 percent of school; those with one obstacle missed 7.5 percent; those with two missed 9.0 percent; and those with three or more missed 12.9 percent. Many of the family circumstances associated with lower preschool attendance are disproportionately experienced by African American families and, in some cases, Latino families; this contributes to their children s higher absence rates compared to white children. Parent beliefs and school culture also may play a role in how often children attend preschool. Parents with stronger beliefs about the importance of regular attendance in preschool also had children with better attendance. In particular, parents who believed that regular attendance in preschool is as important as in later grades had children with the lowest absence rates (7.5 percent); those whose parents said that attendance in preschool is important but would be more important in later years had higher absence rates (10.7 percent); and children whose parents did not believe that regular attendance in preschool mattered much had the highest absence rates (13.2 percent). Safe schools, schools in which there is strong parent involvement, and schools in which trust in teachers is strong have better preschool attendance than schools in which these factors are lacking. Summary Both state and federal policies have increasingly focused on early education, aiming to make preschool universally available to three- and four-year-old children. Despite decades of research on the effects of preschool education, the focus has been solely on whether or not enrollment in preschool is beneficial; only recently has attention turned to whether attendance in preschool matters once students are enrolled. This study suggests that ensuring preschool students attend regularly is a critical component in preparing them for kindergarten and beyond, particularly for students who have low levels of prior skills. Schools may not be able solve all of the issues that keep students from coming to school, but they can work on strategies to get students to school despite those issues. And these strategies can be integrated with other efforts in a school, such an existing Response to Intervention (RtI) model. A critical first step in improving preschool students attendance is collecting attendance data and monitoring it at the student and school levels. Monthly or biweekly watch lists that highlight those students who miss more than a particular number of days may prove useful, so that teachers can reach out to parents to help develop strategies for attending more regularly. Sharing preschool attendance records with kindergarten teachers as students transition to the next grade level may help elementary schools maintain a sustained and consistent approach to improving attendance over time. Developing a strong and trusting relationship between school staff and parents may also play a role in improving students attendance. As parents become directly involved in their child s learning and have stronger relationships with their child s teacher, there is a greater support for academic advancement and more opportunities for school staff to convey the importance of regular attendance in preschool. More targeted efforts may be necessary for students who enter preschool with low levels of incoming skills. These students are the most likely to miss a large amount of preschool, and they benefit the most from regular attendance. It may help to reach out to these parents and build a partnership at the beginning of the 3 Executive Summary

6 school year, before the student is frequently absent, to develop strategies for students learning that include regular attendance. Strong connections between schools and families may also provide an opportunity for school staff to better understand the particular challenges parents face in getting their children to school. Improving attendance of very young children is likely to require a student by student, family by family approach. While schools cannot reasonably be expected to solve many of the issues that lead to very high rates of absenteeism (e.g., poor family health, child care, and lack of access to quality medical care), they may be able to partner with community organizations that can assist with some of these challenges or figure out ways to help families to support each other. Community partnerships may prove particularly useful in several areas that substantially contribute to preschool absences (e.g., poor student and family health, and the half-day preschool schedule) and may also utilize parents to reach out to other parents, helping to create social networks for families of young children. 4 UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools

7 Introduction Preschool education has become a priority at both the federal and state level, based in large part on decades of research documenting the long-term benefits of early education. However, much of this research focuses on whether or not simply being enrolled in preschool is beneficial. This study attempts to go further by examining whether students enrolled in preschool attend regularly and the extent to which preschool attendance is related to later outcomes. Preschool education has come to the forefront of conversations on national education policy. In February 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama proposed making preschool universally available to all four-year-old children. This follows a number of state-level policies, including one in 2006 by the state of Illinois, to make preschool universally available to three- and four-yearold children. Both the state-level efforts and Obama s policy initiative are motivated by research showing that high-quality early education can better prepare children for kindergarten and lead to improved long-term outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children. 3 Yet, despite decades of research on the effects of preschool education, questions have largely focused on whether or not enrollment in preschool is beneficial. What has not been investigated is the extent to which students who enroll in preschool attend regularly, and whether attendance in preschool matters once students are enrolled. Research on older students shows that those with better attendance in school have better learning outcomes; they earn higher grades, fail fewer classes, and are more likely to graduate. 4 For older children, attendance is both a key component of achievement (those who attend more school have more opportunities to learn) and an indicator of whether students are likely to struggle with attendance and/or academics in the future. But the extent to which attendance at the preschool level works in the same way is not known. To address this gap in research, the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) partnered with the Office of Early Childhood Education at Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in 2011 to study absenteeism among preschool students in CPS. Our study includes three areas of inquiry. First, we document the scope of absenteeism in preschool and examine which students are most likely to be chronically absent. Second, we examine whether attendance during preschool is related to student outcomes. These include kindergarten readiness by the end of preschool, ongoing attendance patterns through second grade, and reading outcomes at the end of second grade. Lastly, we explore reasons why preschool students miss school. The following sections discuss each of these research questions in more depth. What is the Extent of Absenteeism Among Preschool Students? Currently, there is only limited evidence documenting how often young children are absent from school, but that evidence suggests that absenteeism rates are high: nationally, more than 11 percent of kindergarten students are chronically absent, missing more than 18 days, or three to four weeks per year. 5 Among preschool students, absenteeism may be even higher. A recent study released by the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) was the first to document how 5 Introduction

8 6 prevalent absenteeism is for preschool students, showing that more than one-third of preschoolers in Baltimore are chronically absent. 6 These rates seem high but, given the dearth of comparative information, it is hard to know whether they are specific to Baltimore or indicative of national trends in preschool absenteeism. The present study adds to the understanding of the scope of preschool absenteeism by investigating what preschool attendance looks like in Chicago. In Chapter 1, we answer the questions: What are average attendance rates among preschool students in Chicago Public Schools, and how many students are chronically absent during preschool? Among preschool students, who is most likely to be chronically absent? Is Preschool Attendance Tied to Students Academic Success Both in Preschool and Beyond? Although school attendance is related to learning outcomes for older students, there is little evidence that it works in the same way during the preschool years. In fact, there are several reasons to think it might not. For example, while enrollment in high-quality preschool programs increases children s preparedness for kindergarten, research is not clear about the amount of exposure during the school day or week preschool children need to achieve this goal. If only a small amount of exposure is needed, then how regularly a student attends preschool may not matter all that much. This may be particularly true in Chicago, where most programs run for only half of the day (2.5 to 3 hours), and therefore daily absences refer only to missing a short amount of school. On the other hand, if attendance is indeed associated with learning outcomes in preschool, the relationship may be stronger for students who enter preschool with the weakest academic skills, who may also be the children who benefit most from enrollment in preschool. 7 Low levels of attendance for these children may mean that they have less time in the classroom to develop kindergarten readiness skills both academic knowledge and social-emotional behaviors that other students may develop at home. Low attendance may also be an indicator that other aspects of their lives are preventing them from attending school regularly and are hindering their learning in preparation for kindergarten. To address the current lack of evidence around whether preschool attendance matters, Chapter 3 answers the questions: Is attendance in preschool related to learning outcomes in preschool, including the development of letter recognition, pre-literacy, math, and social-emotional skills? If so, is the relationship between attendance and learning outcomes the same for different groups of students, including those with different socioeconomic backgrounds or different levels of incoming achievement? Attendance in preschool may serve another purpose: identifying students who are most likely to struggle with attendance, and also learning, in future years. Can attendance in the early years provide information that identifies which students will be most likely to present these patterns of disengagement when they are older? Preschool may be too early preschool children are often sick, so attendance during preschool may not be a very good indicator of attendance in later grades. However, if patterns of behavior do begin early on, preschool may be the first opportunity to identify students most likely to exhibit low attendance and low levels of learning in future years. Because we know very little about attendance in preschool and the patterns that persist in the early elementary years, Chapter 2 also presents evidence on the following question for students in Chicago: To what extent is preschool attendance related to attendance and learning outcomes in later grades? Why are Students Absent from Preschool? Once we understand how absences are related to learning outcomes, knowing the reasons why preschool students miss school, and whether these reasons differ across groups of students, is critical to addressing the problem. Although we have some understanding of why older children miss school, 8 the specific reasons why preschool children are absent have not been carefully documented. This is a significant deficiency because the preschool context is quite different from the older grades, requiring different strategies for improving attendance. Young children are sick more often than older children and more likely to miss school as a result. 9 Quality of health, even among young children, UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools

9 can differ significantly depending on background characteristics, meaning that some preschool students may be more likely to miss school due to sickness than others, depending on their race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status. 10 For example, children from lower socioeconomic families are more likely to have serious health issues and also more likely to be chronically absent. 11 In addition, young children are much more reliant than older children on their parents and other family members to get to school, so family circumstances may also play a greater role in whether a preschool student has good attendance. In Chapter 3, we explore the following questions: What are the reasons why preschool students are absent from school? How do these reasons differ for white, Latino, and African American students? In addition to examining reasons for preschools students absences, we also ask: What types of family circumstances and parental beliefs are related to attendance for CPS preschool students? While reasons for absences among preschool students may be strongly associated with health and family circumstances, schools may also play a role. Research on elementary students suggests that schools with high levels of safety and order, engaging instruction, teacher professional capacity, and parent involvement are more likely to show improvements in student outcomes, including attendance. 12 Extending this question to preschool students has yet to be explored, and so we examine school-level factors and ask: Does school context play a role in whether preschool students are frequently absent? Who We Studied This study focused specifically on three- and fouryear-old children served by school-based preschool programs in CPS between and The study did not include children who either were enrolled in Montessori programs or were in self-contained 7 Do CPS Preschool Students Attend Their Local, Neighborhood Schools for Preschool or Do They Attend Preschool at Other Sites? In Chicago, there is a considerable amount of school choice, even at the elementary school level. At the preschool level, an array of options are available both in schools and in community-based settings. Because this research focuses on preschool students in CPS, we describe the options for those families choosing to send their children to CPS programs. Unlike students in kindergarten and beyond, preschool students do not have an assigned neighborhood school based on where they live. Instead, parents of preschool aged children are required to submit applications to schools they are considering, and schools make the decisions about who to enroll, based on eligibility requirements put forth by their program funders. A Given this context, we found that only 41 percent of preschool students attended a preschool housed in an elementary school that would be their assigned neighborhood school in a later grade (Table 1). B This is 26 percentage points lower than that of kindergarten students; more than 66 percent of kindergarteners attend their neighborhood school. C Among four-year-olds transitioning into kindergarten, almost 60 percent chose to stay in the same school they attended for preschool (see Table 1). The other 41 percent of students entered different schools when they transitioned into kindergarten. As discussed later in this report, monitoring attendance in both preschool and kindergarten may be a viable to way to intervene with families that need the most support in getting their child to school regularly. With so many students moving to a different school between preschool and kindergarten, this may be a challenge for the district. TABLE 1 Fewer preschoolers attend their local school compared with kindergarten students, but 60 percent stay in the same school from preschool into kindergarten. Percent of preschoolers who attend their neighborhood school in preschool Percent of kindergarten students who attend their neighborhood school 40.6% 66.4% Percent of preschoolers (four-year-olds) attending the same school the following 59.0% year when they are in kindergarten Note: Calculations were based on four-year-old preschool students in the school year and kindergarten students in the school year. Introduction

10 8 special education programs. In each of the four years we studied, CPS enrolled around 26,000 preschool students in four different school-based programs, including Preschool for All (PFA), Head Start, Child-Parent Centers (CPC), and tuition-based programs. Although we did not study differences between the preschool programs within CPS, it is worth noting that, unlike K-12 education, early childhood programs are funded through a number of different funding streams that each has a different governance. 14 One way in which funding differences affect a program is by determining whether it is a half- or full-day program. During the years of our study, most preschoolers in CPS attended half-day programs meaning they were in school for two-and-a-half or three hours per day. However, children in tuition-based programs and some children in CPC programs attended full-day programs. About half as many students attend CPS preschools at age three than at age four, and they tend to have higher risk-factors than four-year-old preschoolers. This is likely due to the funding stipulations of preschool programs; public funding for preschool is prioritized for four-year-olds who will be entering kindergarten the following year. A small portion of funds is dedicated to three-year-olds who have high risk-factors for academic failure. Three-year-olds during the school year were more likely than four-year-olds to be African American (44 vs. 34 percent) and from high-poverty neighborhoods (21 vs. 15 percent of four-year-olds; see Figure 1). Four-year-old preschool students were similar to kindergarten students in terms of overall background characteristics, even though many children enter the CPS system for the first time in kindergarten. 15 FIGURE 1 Within the preschool population, three-year-olds are slightly more disadvantaged than four-year-olds, while four-year-olds are similar to kindergarteners 60 Percent Preschool Students in Each Absence Category % 45.6% 44.1% 37.6% 38.7% 34.3% 10.9% 10.8% 10.7% 16% 6.3% 5.6% 6.1% 20.5% 15.3% 15.6% 9.0% 8.2% 7.8% 0 White African American Latino Other Race High Poverty Special Education Age 3 Preschooler Age 4 Preschooler Kindergarteners Note: Data are based on students who were enrolled in preschool and kindergarten during the school year. The number of students at each age/grade level are: age 3 preschoolers=8,741, age 4 preschoolers=15,971, and kindergarteners=31,010. UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools

11 CHAPTER 1 The Extent of Absenteeism in Preschool and the Early Grades This chapter shows that chronic absenteeism in CPS preschool programs is extremely common: almost half of all three-year-old students and more than onethird of all four-year-old preschoolers are chronically absent. However, students start attending school more regularly as they move into kindergarten and the early elementary school grades. The biggest improvement in attendance occurs between preschool and kindergarten, even though neither preschool nor kindergarten is compulsory in the state of Illinois. Students race is strongly associated with attendance, more so than neighborhood poverty; African American preschool students are almost twice as likely to be chronically absent as students who are Latino, white, or of another racial/ethnic background. In Chapter 3, we examine the race gaps in attendance and explore some of the reasons African American preschool students miss more school than either white or Latino preschool students. How Prevalent is Absenteeism in Preschool? Preschool students have very high absence rates, but attendance improves as students enter the early elementary grades. Although there have been improvements in preschool attendance in CPS over the last few years, three- and four-year-old preschool students still miss a lot of school. In , three-year-old preschoolers missed an average of 12.5 percent of the school year, and fouryear-olds missed almost 10.5 percent (see Figure 2). This means the typical preschool student in CPS was chronically absent, missing at least 10 percent of school. When students enter kindergarten, their absence rates improve substantially. Over the four years we studied, absence rates for five-year-olds were at least four percentage points better than for three- and four-year-olds. Attendance continued to improve incrementally as students moved through early elementary school. For thirdgraders, average absence rates were around 5 percent. Another way of describing absenteeism is by looking at how many students were chronically absent at each age. In , 45 percent of three-year-olds and 36 percent of four-year-olds in CPS were chronically absent (see Figure 3). Of these students, at least onethird missed 20 percent or more of school. Over the full school year, this is equivalent to missing 30 days, or at least six weeks (see Defining Attendance on p.11). Chronic absenteeism declines as students get older 20 percent of five-year-olds were chronically absent, and this decreased to 10 percent of eight-year-olds. Who is Most Likely to be Chronically Absent? African American preschool students are more likely to be chronically absent than other students. Chronic absenteeism is more prevalent among some groups of preschool students than others. In particular, African American students are much more likely to be chronically absent than students of any other racial or ethnic group. And students from high-poverty neighborhoods are more likely to be chronically absent than students who live in low- or moderate-poverty neighborhoods (see Appendix A, p.43 for our definitions of neighborhood poverty). Because race and neighborhood poverty are linked, with African Americans more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods, we looked at the relationship of each with chronic absenteeism, while taking the other into account. We found race has a stronger relationship with chronic absenteeism, even after we consider student s neighborhood poverty level. African American preschool students from low- or moderate-poverty neighborhoods are about twice as likely to be chronically absent as white students from similar neighborhoods, and over 1.5 times more likely to be chronically absent as Latino students or students of other races/ethnicities from neighborhoods with low or moderate poverty (see Figure 5, p.13). In fact, African American students from neighborhoods 9 Chapter 1 The Extent of Absenteeism in Preschool and the Early Grades

12 FIGURE 2 Preschool students have average absence rates above 10 percent, but students in kindergarten and the early elementary grades have lower absence rates 16% 14% Average Absence Rates 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0 Age 3 (Pre-K) Age 4 (Pre-K) Age 5 (K) Age 6 (1st Grade) Age 7 (2nd Grade) Age 8 (3rd Grade) 10 Age Note: Figure 2 shows average absence rates for students, by age, during each of four school years; thus, different ages represent different students (it is a crosssectional look). But the same pattern shown here, an improvement in attendance after preschool, also exists when we follow the same students over time, from preschool into kindergarten and beyond. In a separate analysis of students who were three years old, in , their average absence rates through were as follows: 13.8 percent at age three, 11.5 percent at age four ( ), 8.4 percent at age five ( ), and 5.2 percent at age six ( ). FIGURE 3 Forty-five percent of three-year-old and 36 percent of four-year-old preschoolers are chronically absent; the rate of chronic absenteeism decreases substantially when children enter kindergarten % Percent Students in Each Absence Category % 36% 20% 14% 12% 10% 5 0 Age 3 (Pre-K) Age 4 (Pre-K) Age 5 (K) Age 6 (1st Grade) Age 7 (2nd Grade) Age 8 (3rd Grade) Age Absence Rate: 10% < 15% 15% < 20% 20%+ Note: Data are from ; Ns by age group: age three=8,830; age four=16,118; age five=30,598; age six=30,746; age seven=30,736; age eight=27,722. UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools

13 Defining Attendance A number of terms are frequently used to describe student attendance. Schools and programs are often held accountable for their average daily attendance, which is the average percentage of enrolled students who attend school each day. Although the average attendance rate for a program is a useful measure for looking at improvement over time, this metric can mask some nuances of attendance. Take, for example, a group of 100 students in a school with an overall average attendance rate of 95 percent. Several different scenarios can result in the same overall attendance rate for this school. In one case, each student misses 5 percent of school, equally contributing to the overall attendance rate of 95 percent. Alternatively, it could be the case that the 20 students each miss 25 percent of school days while all other students show up every day of the year, also resulting in an overall attendance rate of 95 percent for the school. These two scenarios in which the overall attendance rate is the same can mean very different things for individual students. In the first case, all students are missing some school, but no one student is missing a substantial amount. In the second scenario, some students are missing a sizeable amount of school. D Because attendance rates can mask very different attendance patterns for individual students, in this report we focus on attendance at the individual level. A student s attendance rate is defined as the number of days a student shows up to school out of the total days that student is enrolled. Students may be enrolled for different numbers of days because some students enter school or leave in the middle of the year. Alternatively, out of the number of days enrolled, absence rate is the number of days a student misses school. We also consider whether students are chronically absent, defined here as missing 10 percent or more of school, regardless of the reason for the absence. We use this cutoff of 10 percent for several reasons. First, most research on chronic absenteeism with older students uses this definition. E Second, we show in Chapter 2 that preschool students who miss at least 10 percent of school have significantly lower kindergarten readiness skills than children who attend school most regularly. Preschool students who miss at least 10 percent of school are also more likely to be chronically absent in future years. In some instances (see Chapter 3), we categorized students into six groups based on their absence rates (shown in Table 2). The first three categories, also used in other attendance research, F differentiate among students who are not chronically absent those who are absent less than 10 percent of the time. Because absence rates are so high among preschool children, we added three additional categories to differentiate among students who are chronically absent. The definition of chronic absenteeism is distinct from truancy, which signals the potential need for legal intervention under state compulsory education laws. Truancy rates only include absences that are unexcused; chronic absenteeism does not differentiate between excused and unexcused absences because both result in a day of missed learning. TABLE 2 Definitions of absence categories used in this report and the corresponding days missed over the full school year. Category Absence Rates Maximum Days Missed Based on Full Preschool Year (150 days) 1 0%<3.3% 5 days (~1 week) 2 3.3%<6.6% 10 days (~2 weeks) 3 6.6%<10% 15 days (~3 weeks) 4 10%<15% 22.5 days (~4.5 weeks) 5 15%<20% 30 days (~6 weeks) 6 20% + >6 weeks Note: In CPS preschool programs from through , the full school year was approximately 150 school days. This is fewer than the full school year for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade, for whom the school year was 170 days; the difference can be accounted for by the higher number of professional development days allotted for preschool teachers. 11 Chapter 1 The Extent of Absenteeism in Preschool and the Early Grades

14 Absence Rates over the School Year 12 Students miss more school at certain times of the year (see Figure 4). Absences are most prevalent in the winter months: on average, children miss three percentage points more school in the winter months than when school first starts (about 11.5 percent of school in January compared with 8.1 percent in September). During the spring, absence rates are somewhat better than during the winter dropping to about 10.2 percent but they never return to levels seen at the beginning of the year. This suggests that encouragement for regular attendance needs to occur not only at the beginning of the year but also as the school year progresses. Patterns in Absences We wondered whether students with similar absence rates might exhibit different patterns of absences, in terms of missing a day here and there or missing large blocks of days at a time. For example, one student may miss a day or two each month and have an overall absence rate of 10 percent, while another student might have one long absence episode (e.g., to visit family in another country) and also end up with a 10 percent absence rate. One might speculate that these different patterns are related to children s learning in distinct ways. Perhaps, a student who misses one long stretch of time has a better chance of catching back up in school when s/he returns after the absence, compared to peers who miss for shorter lengths of time more frequently. On the other hand, it may be harder for a student to recover from one long absence. Either way, absence patterns have the potential to be related to learning outcomes. Because we explore the relationship between absences and outcomes in the next chapter, here we examine whether there was evidence that children displayed different patterns of attendance. To explore patterns in absences, we used cluster analysis on a sample of almost 19,000 three- and four-year-old students in , categorizing students into groups based on two aspects of their absences: (1) the number of absence incidents a student had over the school year, and (2) the length of each student s longest absence from school Our analyses revealed that, in general, these two variables were strongly related to each other and also to a student s overall absence rate. G Students who ever missed a long period of school also had many incidences of absences throughout the year. In other words, it was uncommon for children to miss a single, lengthy period of time without also having other smaller incidents of absence. This means that students with higher absence rates throughout this report were likely to be missing school both more frequently and for longer periods of time than students with lower absence rates. H FIGURE 4 Absence rates are highest during the winter months 16 Percent of Average Absence Rates % 8.1% 9.3% 11.0% 11.1% 11.5% 11.4% 11.2% 10.2% 10.1% 10.3% 0 Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May June Months of the School Year Note: Data are from ; N=25,279. UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools

15 FIGURE 5 African American students are more likely to be chronically absent than students of other racial/ ethnic backgrounds, regardless of poverty level. Percent % NA White 57% 53% African American 35% 30% 16% Latino Low/Moderate Neighborhood Poverty High Neighborhood Poverty with low or moderate poverty are more likely to be chronically absent than Latino students living in highpoverty neighborhoods. Chapter 3 explores in greater depth the reasons why African American preschool students miss more school than white or Latino students. Although race is most strongly associated with absenteeism, poverty does still have a significant 31% Other Race relationship with chronically absenteeism. Students 38% Note: (1) This figure is based on three- and four-year olds from ; N=24,854. There were not enough white students living in high-poverty neighborhoods to include their absence rates on this figure (n<30). (2) The category Other Race includes: Native American/Alaskan Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, Pacific Islander/ Hawaiian, and Multicultural. (3) There were no significant differences between absence rates in low- vs. moderate-poverty neighborhoods, so they are collapsed here. Poverty is based on the unemployment and income levels in a student s residential block group. of all races/ethnicities are more likely to be chronically absent if they live in neighborhoods with substantial levels of poverty. However, the differences in chronic absenteeism between high-poverty neighborhoods and low/moderate-poverty neighborhoods for students of a given race/ethnicity are more modest than differences between racial/ethnic groups. Given that absenteeism is more prevalent among African Americans, it is not surprising that preschools with the highest average absence rates are located in neighborhoods that are predominantly African American. Figure 6 shows that across Chicago, schools with the lowest average preschool attendance (highest average absence rates) are clustered in neighborhoods with higher proportions of African American residents. However, there are also examples across the city where two schools that are located very close to each other often serving similar populations of students look very different in terms of their preschool attendance rates. In Chapter 3, we explore whether there are school context factors that explain attendance patterns after taking into account the population of students being served. In addition to race and poverty, several other background characteristics were also related to the likelihood of being chronically absent during preschool. Four-year-olds were less likely to be chronically absent than three-year-olds. Four-year-olds who attended a CPS preschool program in the prior year, when they were three years old, were less likely to be chronically absent than those who were not CPS preschoolers the previous year. English Language Learners (ELL) were also less likely to be chronically absent than students who were not ELL. Other characteristics, such as gender and receiving special education services, were not associated with differences in chronic absenteeism Chapter 1 The Extent of Absenteeism in Preschool and the Early Grades

16 FIGURE 6 Schools with higher preschool absence rates are clustered in predominantly African American neighborhoods, but some schools have better attendance rates than expected given neighborhood characteristics Absence Rates 0 3.3% % % 10 15% 15 20% 20 35% Percent African American 0 10% n= % n= % n= % n= % n= HOW TO READ FIGURE 6 Each circle represents a school, and the colors correspond to the average absence rate for their preschool students. The grey tones in the background depict the proportion of the population that is African American, by census block. UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools

17 Summary Chronic absenteeism among preschool students in CPS is extremely high; about 40 percent of all preschoolers miss 10 percent or more of school, or at least 15 days for a student enrolled for the entire school year. However, attendance improves substantially as children move into kindergarten and the early elementary grades. African American students are the most likely to be chronically absent, and living in a high-poverty neighborhood also increases a student s chances of being chronically absent. Given the prevalence of chronic absenteeism among preschool students, the next chapter explores whether missing a lot of school has any implications for students learning outcomes, both during preschool and in the early elementary grades. 15 Chapter 1 The Extent of Absenteeism in Preschool and the Early Grades

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19 CHAPTER 2 Preschool Attendance and Primary Grade Outcomes Preschool attendance is significantly related to student outcomes, both at the end of preschool and in later years. CPS students with more absences during preschool had lower skills as measured by a kindergarten readiness assessment even when we take into account their skill level when they started preschool. Better attendance was more beneficial for students who entered preschool with the lowest academic skills; unfortunately, these were also the students most likely to be chronically absent. Although attendance improves substantially between preschool and kindergarten, chronic absenteeism remains a significant problem for some students throughout the elementary grades. In fact, students who miss many days of preschool are much more likely than other students to continue this pattern into kindergarten and beyond. Students with successive years of chronic absenteeism from preschool into the early elementary years not only tend to start out with the lowest skills but also continue to fall behind their classmates. At the end of second grade, students with multiple years of chronic absenteeism are, on average, in need of reading interventions. Is Preschool Attendance Related to Kindergarten Readiness Outcomes? Students who miss more preschool have lower kindergarten readiness scores. Four-year-olds in CPS who missed more school during the course of a year had lower levels of kindergarten readiness by the end of that year than students who missed fewer days of school (see Figure 7, p.19). As absence rates increased, students scores decreased on all four subscales of the KRT: math, letter recognition, preliteracy, and social-emotional development. Significant differences on the pre-literacy subscale emerged for students who missed at least 6.6 percent of school days, compared with students with the best attendance (absence rate between 0 and 3.3 percent). On the math, letter recognition, and social-emotional subscales, students who missed 10 percent or more of school had significantly lower scores than students with the best attendance. The scale in Figure 7 uses logit units (which is not an intuitively meaningful unit, although it provides a constant comparison across subscales). An alternative way to think about how strongly attendance is related to learning outcomes is to compare the percent of items students correctly answered on each KRT subscale by different levels of attendance. In math, the students with the best attendance correctly answered 88 percent of the questions, on average, compared to 82 percent correctly answered by students who missed between 10 and 15 percent of school, and 75 percent for students who missed at least 20 percent of school. Differences across attendance levels were largest on the letter recognition subscale; regular attenders knew about 90 percent of the letters and sounds assessed, while students who missed between 10 and 15 percent of school knew only 84 percent, and those who missed the most school only knew about 68 percent. This subscale of the KRT constitutes the very basic literacy knowledge students will need for success in kindergarten and beyond. There were smaller differences in outcomes by attendance levels on the pre-literacy subscale: Students in the highest and lowest attendance groups scored about eight percentage points apart. 17 Importantly, attendance was not only related to academic outcomes, but also to social-emotional outcomes. Students who missed more school were rated by their teachers as having lower levels of appropriate behavior and work habits. Students start preschool with different levels of prior skills and backgrounds, and this can contribute to differences in their performance on the KRT at the end of the year. Indeed, in our sample, students who missed more preschool were also the students who began the year with the lowest skills (see Table A.3 on p.45 in Appendix A). 18 However, even after taking into account test scores at the beginning of the year and background characteristics, missing more school was 17 Chapter 2 Preschool Attendance and Primary Grade Outcomes

20 Data Used to Study the Relationship between Preschool Attendance and Preschool Achievement Outcomes 18 Sample Our analysis examining the relationship between absenteeism in preschool and kindergarten readiness at the end of preschool used a sample of 1,265 fouryear-old students who were part of CPS s Preschool Longitudinal Study (PLS) in Students in this sample were not exactly equivalent to the overall preschool population; they were more likely to be white and less likely to be Latino or receiving special education services than the full four-year-old CPS population in (see Table A.3 on p.45 in Appendix A). i They were slightly more likely to be from a high-poverty neighborhood, with 16 percent of the PLS sample coming from such neighborhoods compared to 13 percent of all four-year-old students. Achievement Measures Students who were part of the PLS sample were administered the Woodcock-Johnson III at the beginning of their preschool year (Fall 2010). They also were administered the CPS-developed Kindergarten Readiness Tool (KRT; in use from 2009 through 2012) as part of a district-wide assessment of kindergarten readiness at the end of the year. We supplemented this achievement data with administrative data received from CPS. Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ) The Woodcock-Johnson III is a norm-referenced test that is comprised of many subtests. J We use students Letter-Word Identification scores as a measure of their incoming skills at the beginning of their four-year-old preschool year. This subtest assesses students ability to identify letters in large print and pronounce words (if they progress far enough into the assessment). CPS Kindergarten Readiness Tool (KRT) The Kindergarten Readiness Tool (KRT) consists of 86 items that were administered one-on-one to students by their teacher, and eight items filled out by teachers, during the spring of the preschool year before kindergarten. We identified four subscales on the KRT: math, letter recognition, pre-literacy, and social-emotional development. See Appendix B for a description of Rasch analyses on the KRT that were used to identify subscales. The math subscale assesses students on basic number concepts, comparisons and ordinal numbers, geometry and measurement, sorting, and addition/subtraction problem solving skills. Letter recognition consists of a set of items that require children to identify the names and sounds of individual letters. Pre-literacy focuses on phonics and phonological awareness, print awareness, oral story-telling, and comprehension. The social-emotional development subscale is comprised of eight items filled out by students teachers that assess student behavior and work habits. For a more detailed description of data sources, samples, and analyses, see Appendix A. still significantly associated with lower scores in math, letter recognition, and social-emotional development, as shown by the light-colored bars in Figure 7. In other words, some differences seen across children at the end of the year are because they started the year with varying levels of incoming skills, but some differences are related to their attendance. Among students with similar incoming skills and backgrounds, students who missed 10 percent or more of school those considered chronically absent still performed significantly worse on the math and letter recognition portions of the KRT than students who had the best attendance. For social-emotional outcomes, a significant difference emerged between students who missed at least 20 percent of school compared with those who missed the least amount of school. 19 For pre-literacy outcomes, once we took into account children s letter recognition skills at the beginning of the year, there was no significant relationship between attendance and end-of-year scores. Some students started the year with higher skills in this domain and they maintained that advantage over other students who started the year with lower pre-literacy skills, regardless of their attendance. Taken together, these findings show CPS students who entered preschool at age four with the lowest skills were the most likely to exhibit high absenteeism during the course of the year, ultimately ending preschool with the lowest levels of academic and social-emotional skills. UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report Preschool Attendance in Chicago Public Schools